Subcultural Identity in Alternative Music Culture

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Subcultural Identity in Alternative Music Culture

Holly Kruse

Popular Music, Vol. 12, No. 1. (Jan., 1993), pp. 33-41.

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Popular Music (1993) Volume 1U1. Copyright 0 1993 Cambridge University Press

Subcultural identity inalternative music cultureHO L L Y KRU S E

Angela McRobbie (1992) has recently observed that what is currently missing fromMarxist cultural studies is a sense of urgency. In part, I believe this lack of urgencyis the result of cultural studies' tendency ultimately to privilege theory over livedexperience; the lived experiences of the post-baby boom generation seem especiallyneglected. As a 1991 issue of Spin magazine told its readers:Magazines and newspapers such as Time and the New York Times are . . . comparing youunfairly to the dynamic and euphoric baby boomers - the authentic prototype of youthculture, at least as they would have it. They're saying you, the members of the twentysome-thing generation, have no distinctive identity, no culture to call your own, only recycled bitsfrom the past. Ask yourself this question: Do you recognize yourself in this portrait? No? Wedidn't think so. (Owen 1991, p. 68)As a member of the twentysomething generation and a Spin subscriber, I foundmyself concurring with Spin's assessment. The magazine went on to remind itsreaders that even 'if a general youth culture no longer exists, vibrant subculturesstill do'. In this article I will look at one particular subculture - college music scenes- and discuss the ways in which these social, cultural and economic formationsallow their members to define themselves as somehow separate (though notunproblematically so) from mainstream culture.

During the 1980s, music disseminated over the air waves of college radioemerged onto the national (and international) scene, spawning its own tradepaper, CMJ , its own chart in Rolling Stone and a host of annual seminars. Theadvent of college radio and the college charts created the possibility that a bandcould break through to at least cult popularity without the aid of a major recordlabel (and now can achieve mainstream success by graduating from the ranks ofindependent labels to the majors: witness REM and Nirvana). Local and regionalscenes abound with low-budget fanzines which help to create identities forunknown acts, and with artists who put out tapes and records on their own or withthe help of independent record companies. So college music is associated not justwith college radio, but with particular geographic sites: the earliest and mostfamous scene was Athens, Georgia from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s,home of the B-52's, REM, Love Tractor and, temporarily, Matthew Sweet; the mostrecently prominent in Seattle, home of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mud-honey. (I might add that in Fall 1991 Rolling Stone called Champaign, Illinois, site ofmy own involvement in college music and of much of my research, a 'fledglingmusic Mecca'.)

Though college music is largely geographically defined (Hiisker Dii always


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34 Holly Krusewas a 'Minneapolis' band), membership in the subculture(s) associated with col-lege music - comprised of musicians, fans, record label owners and employees,record store owners and employees, college radio station disc jockeys and musicdirectors - points to the ways in which alternative music scenes across the UnitedStates, and even across the Atlantic, are connected rather abstractly throughshared tastes - Simon Reynolds has observed, 'A noise band in Manchester canhave more in common with a peer group in Austin, Texas than with one of its"neighbours" two blocks away' (1990, p. 174)- and quite concretely through socialand economic networks. Before examining how processes of identification work incollege music scenes, I want first to look more closely at the idea of identity.

Theories of identityLaclau and Mouffe (1985) suggest that social identities are not fixed, but rather arearticulated within a structure of social relations that causes every social agent tooccupy multiple social positions at once, through identifications of race, gender,class, ethnicity, occupation, educational level, tastes and so on. Further, as StuartHall has observed, identification does not happen once and for all (1989, p. 73). Yetwhile we can point to how subjects are fragmented, we must not forget that mostof the time we each tend, through the construction of identity within the workingsof ideology, to experience our subjectivities as unitary and non-contradictory - tosee ourselves as whole individuals (see Henriques et al. 1984). Identities are produ-ced within an ideological field where signs 'can be discursively re-articulated toconstruct new meanings, connect with different social practices, and position socialsubjects differently' (Hall 1988, p. 9). The practice of using LSD, for instance,meant something different among members of the US counterculture in the 1960sthan it did in Athens, Georgia in the early 1980s (where it was widely used byparticipants in the local, college-based, alternative music scene) and than it did(does) in Great Britain during the 'raves' of the late 1980s. In each of these cases, aparticular practice is articulated within a specific discursive terrain, and helps toconstruct a different sort of oppositional identity.

Indeed, as much as the word 'identification' seems to imply a sense of belong-ing, perhaps even more it describes a process of differentiation. As Laclau andMouffe state, 'all values are values of opposition and are defined only by theirdifference' (1985, p. 106). Senses of shared identity are alliances formed out ofoppositional stances. Yet even in the world of alternative or college music, opposi-tional choices are increasingly channelled through the conduits of corporatecapitalism; so that you may choose to buy the latest record by the Breeders insteadof Color Me Badd's platinum album - but both CDs are put out by Warner.Consumer culture, as Mike Featherstone points out,does not encourage a grey conformism in the choice of goods . . . rather it seeks to educateindividuals to read the differences in signs, to decode the minutiae of distinctions in dress,house furnishing, leisure lifestyles and equipment. (quoted in Tomlinson 1990, p. 21)Defining yourself in opposition to mainstream music merely means that Warnercan sell you the Throwing Muses instead of Madonna. The college or alternativemusic consumer of today who is an adept reader of the signs that differentiate popmusic products knows that when Nirvana, now on David Geffen's label afterputting out a record on Seattle's independent Sub Pop label, hits number one on


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35ubcultural identity in alternative music culturethe Billboard album chart, the only real underground left can be found among thegrowing ranks of 7-inch singles only labels, like Champaign-Urbana's Parasol, orSlumberland on the East Coast.

Popular music identities: indie pop in ChampaignYet there are subcultures out there defined primarily by forms of musical consump-tion which are perceived as oppositional. In loolung at how particular members ofthese cultural formations describe their own social practices, we must recognisethat these practices take place on a number of different levels. On the most generallevel, particular situated practices identify subjects as participants in a broad alter-native/college music culture. Of course, using labels like 'alternative music' or'college music' is problematic. As an Urbana record store manager and drummerpoints out:You could pick Suicidal Tendencies and call them alternative, but they're more of a metalband. Then you've got Ministry, Depeche Mode, and even though they're just pop bands,they get played on college radio . . . [and then] you've got somebody like REM or DepecheMode who have become extremely successful, branching out from [the college radioaudience] to listeners that are younger.From this perspective, 'alternative' is really an industry-imposed definition. Amusician I interviewed claims that a band is alternative ifthe only way people know of them is through 'alternative' markets. They're not beingplayed on MTV - they're not being played after Extreme, they're not being played everyhour like "No More Words" or "More Than Words" or whatever that is.But 'alternative music' seems to have not merely to do with channels of productdistribution. To some degree, everyone I interviewed -musicians, people involvedin radio, people involved in the production and sale of records - implicitly definedthemselves as 'alternative' by making claims about the uniqueness of their music ortheir audience: no one else was doing what they were doing. Common remarksfrom musicians included 'I don't think anyone in town sounds like [us]', and'[Locally], there's nobody like us'. At small independent labels, comments like'there're other labels that do the same stuff, but . . . we're not in it for the money,and I don't see it as competition', are not uncommon. People who work in recordstores will acknowledge that they share clientele with other stores, but note thatthey really do not see the other stores as competitors, because they 'don't carryidentical merchandise'. And people who programme college and community radiostations rarely view commercial stations in their areas as competing for theiraudience. All these scene participants view their products or services as unique, atleast within their localities.

In order to get a firmer grasp on what specific determinants constitute iden-tity in alternative music scenes, we must look more specifically at taste. A veteransinger/songwriter/guitarist in the Champaign scene illustrates the importance oftaste in delineating subcultural identities by noting that at the time he and his bandrelocated to Champaign in the early 1980s, it was (and still is) important to himthat, 'the music that we liked then wasn't something that everyone knew about:Alex Chilton, the Velvet Underground, Mitch Easter'. As he became more inter-ested in bands like Sonic Youth and Black Flag in the mid-1980s, the band brokeup, though he has remained a fixture in the local indie music scene. The list of


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36 Holly Krusemusicians who have impacted the college music scene participants I interviewed israther repetitive and limited: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Alex Chilton, NeilYoung, Television, the Sex Pistols, the dBs, REM, Let's Active, Husker Du, theReplacements, the Softboys.

This very narrow range of taste reflects the focus of my research on the indiepop subcultures. Within alternative music culture the poplrock distinction is clearlyimportant. When asked to label the music they play, the musicians I interviewedtended to employ the word 'pop' as a particularly meaningful term, though onewhich inevitably required modification with adjectives. Responses to the questionabout how they would label their own music included: 'I used to call it pop, but . . .I don't know what it means anymore - it's just melodic guitar stuff'; or, 'Beatle-esque pop stuff with nice melodies and clever arrangements'; or, in this particu-larly painful attempt at self-definition, 'I would call it pop music. I would call itwimpy pop music. I would not call it power pop. I would have to say "jangly"guitar pop - even though I have a great fear of the REM comparison'. The owner ofa Champaign-based independent singles label called the music he puts out 'mainlypop stuff - indie guitar pop'. (In fact, when I first moved to Champaign, a musicianI met, upon learning who my favourite bands were, said, 'Oh good - another popfan!' I had never thought of my taste in those terms before.)

The choice to label the music with which one is associated as 'pop' is a veryinteresting move, because understanding 'popus use in this context requires acertain sort of subcultural knowledge. For most people, 'pop music' refers to Top40 material, but within alternative music culture, 'pop' is used to refer to music thattends to, in the words of Ruth Finnegan, 'reject . . . the wilder extremes of, say,heavy metal or punk' (1989, p. 104). Indie pop stresses melody and song structure,and is largely defined historically by a knowledge and appreciation of certain(mainly non-local) bands and musicians; and while you might trace your 'guitarpop' tastes back to the Beatles or the Beach Boys, most commonly cited as themythic founder of this genre is Alex Chilton, and specifically his early 1970sMemphis band Big Star.

On the surface, indie pop does not appear to be particularly 'oppositional',especially now that REM, its most visible practitioner, has achieved multi-platinumsuccess. But Simon Reynolds maintains that indie pop - in Britain, at least - doessignify opposition to mainstream music practices, not just because the genreemerged - and still largely can be found - on independent labels, but because 'purepop' de-emphasises the physicality of the body and is instead a cerebral form inwhich the voice is a relatively transparent medium for the words (1989, p. 247). ForReynolds, British indie pop represents, in its 'pure' and 'innocent' structures andsounds, a refusal to grow up.

The British indie pop scene clearly is not coterminous with the Americanindie scene, but there are similarities; in fact, Champaign-based 'pure pop' musi-cians (like Nick Rudd, Paul Chastain, Ric Menck and Adam Schmitt) have receivedmore recognition and critical acclaim in Britain than in the USA. Reynolds' criticismof British indie pop's form of refusal - that it 'has itself settled into stiflingorthodoxy: an insistence on short songs, lo-fi, minimalism, purism and guitars,guitars, guitars' (quoted in Redhead 1990, p. 81) -is equally descriptive of the stateof indie pop in the USA. Despite its incipient orthodoxy, however, pop in alterna-tive music scenes is still defined by its difference from other forms of bothmainstream and alternative music: it refuses the mammoth guitar solos of heavy


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37ubcultural identity in alternative music culturemetal, the life and death seriousness and sonic overload of hardcore, the techno-logical excesses of experimental music.

As with all forms of identification, in marking its difference from other typesof music, alternative or college pop music offers those who engage in a certain setof social practices - practices of consumption, of production, of interaction - asense of community (for a fuller description of the concept of a rock community,see Frith 1981). And while participants in local scenes find it necessary to articulatetheir difference from other sorts of music producers/consumers, they are alsoconscious of belonging to a subculture that extends beyond the boundaries of theirown communities. Michael Stipe of REM observes that in the mid-1980s there were'a bunch of musicians who worked out their own philosophies all across thecountry. It was only after we started travelling and met each other that we began tosee we had all these things in common' (quoted in Fletcher 1990, p. 78). For theowner of an independent singles label based in Champaign, business connectionsare largely responsible for his awareness of being part of a broader network ofpeople with shared knowledge and interests:If I were to go to San Francisco, I've got a bunch of people I could call that would go, 'Oh,you're Geoff from Parasol'. And I would know who they are and I would know what kind ofmusic they listen to. . . . But you have to find the right people . . . there are people all overthe place who know who we are . . . We could go anywhere and find somebody who knewwho we were, but we couldn't just randomly pick people.Once you go outside your genre of music, it all falls apart . . . If [Sub Pop] knew whowe were, it would be by some weird, freak thing.

Musical taste and style are clearly important components in subculturalawareness. A long-time drummer in the Champaign indie pop scene comments:[I would] be able to find a niche of musicians and people that I could identify with [if I wereto go somewhere else] . . . you can find people that are similar [to me in] what I like in musicand how I dress and how I talk . . . anywhere you go. Which I appreciate. Sometimes I thinkI'm too narrow-minded. I do find though when I go to more record stores, like when I wentout East to visit [a friend] in New Haven, it's more of a hard-core, alternative metal, punkishtype [community]. Not much pop. That disturbed me.

The sort of subcultural awareness evinced by these indie pop aficiandosindicates that looking at any one particular scene - which both Sara Cohen andRuth Finnegan do in their recent ethnographies of British music communities -cannot give a full account of the complexity of the context in which musical prac-tices and processes of subcultural identification take place. This is not to say thatCohen and Finnegan's contributions are not important. Both authors bring crucialattention to local musical practices. Cohen notes in the introduction to her 1991book, Rock Culture in Liverpool, that what is specifically lacking from the body ofliterature that comprises popular music studies is ethnographic data which detailsboth the process of music-making and the means by which bands struggle tobecome successful at a local level. Her goal is to produce a micro-sociological studyof the Liverpool music scene; the same goal put forth by Ruth Finnegan at thebeginning of her study of Milton Keynes, The Hidden Musicians. Finnegan arguesthe importance of 'looking at practice rather than formalised texts or mental struc-tures, at processes rather than products, at informal grass-roots activities ratherthan formal structure' (1989, p. 8).

While Finnegan looks at all aspects of the amateur music world in MiltonKeynes - including brass bands and church choirs as well as rock bands and pop


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38 Holly Krusegroups - Cohen confines her analysis to struggling rocklpop bands in Liverpooland Merseyside. Most of Cohen's data is derived from her observation of andinterviews with two Liverpool bands, in the mid to late 1980s. She looks at theseLiverpool bands within their particular social, cultural and economic contexts bydescribing how the musicians go about producing and performing their music. Thebands' struggles to succeed are used by Cohen as a means to consider 'the inter-relationships between art and society . . . the tension between creativity and com-merce' (1991b, p. 2). But the focus for both authors is clearly situated musicalpractices - especially for Finnegan, who argues that 'local music is a matter ofactive collective practice rather than . . . passive mass-controlled consumption orthe solitary contemplation of musical works' (1989, p. 297).

By focusing exclusively on local practices, however, I think that Finnegan'sand Cohen's studies overlook an important way in which musicians and othersinvolved in local scenes understand their own involvement: as something that bothidentifies them with and differentiates them from individuals and groups in othercommunities. Moreover, when we see the social and economic relationships thatlink one locality to another and that ultimately place all individuals involved inrelation to an organised national and transnational entertainment industry, werealise the importance of understanding how, as Jody Berland states, culturaltechnologies and their accompanying structures move entertainment 'from a par-ticular space to a non-particular space' (1992, p. 47). Berland underscores theimportance of analysing 'topographies of consumption' which acknowledge that'[tlhe process that produces . . . audiences is in fact indissoluble from the processthat produces the spaces which they inhabit' (p. 39).In the case of alternative or college musics, institutional and economic struc-tures that are increasingly conscious of a market for this music are able to deployresources to move the music of what would generally be considered a non-mainstream band like Nirvana from the particular spaces of college radio, alterna-tive record stores and the college club circuit, to the non-particular spaces ofContemporary Hit Radio, MTV and chain stores. Such shifts produce newaudiences within these different spaces. Or, on a more underground level, therising popularity of singles-only labels and the economic networks that dissemi-nate them create possibilities for artists to reach new, non-local audiences. As oneChampaign musician, who has a single out on the Champaign-based label Parasol,explained, because Parasol deals with distributors:instead of one person buying something in a store, [Geoffl deals with one person who sellsrecords to a whole bunch of people. And [Geoff will] hear from them. There was some guyin Australia who was like, 'I love this record, send me more of it'.

But local music scenes are the sites at which we may first want to look, asCohen and Finnegan do, in order to understand the relationship between situatedmusic practices and the construction of identity; and I use the word 'scene' to implysomething less stable and historically rooted than a 'community' (see Straw 1991,p. 373). In the face of this marginal instability, however, I think it is important toacknowledge that within these scenes senses'of continuity and tradition do exist. Sowhile as Will Straw argues, and I would agree, that to a large degree 'points ofmusical reference are likely to remain stable from one community to another', Idisagree with his claim that 'the relationship of different local or regonal scenes toeach other is no longer one in which specific communities emerge to create a


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Subcultural identity in alternative music culture 39forward movement to which others are drawn' (ibid. p. 378). The emergence ofbands in Champaign in the mid to late 1980s which sought to duplicate the 'Min-neapolis sound' of bands like the Replacements and Soul Asylum, and the currentprominence of the Seattle scene and a supposed 'Seattle sound', testify to thecontrary.Moreover, indie bands and their records often do not find it possible tosuccessfully 'circulate from one local scene to another', as Straw maintains. Somelocalities are more receptive to indie pop (Iowa City, Iowa and Columbia, Missouri,for instance) than others, just as some scenes are receptive to hardcore while othersare not; and this does seem largely to do with the particularities and histories ofeach scene. I would argue that the local and the trans-local co-exist within musicscenes, because local identity and even the concept of a 'local sound' remainimportant (see Cohen 1991a, p. 345). So you can have a musician in Champaignwho cites both REM (from Athens, Georgia) and Paul Chastain (formerly ofChampaign) as important influences. Almost everyone I interviewed involved inthe Champaign alternative ('pop') music scene had a clear and shared sense of thescene's history (The Vertebrats, Screams, Turning Curious, Nines, The Farmboys,Didjits, Pop the Balloon, Weird Summer, The Bowery Boys, Titanic Love Affair,The Poster Children) and identified their own participation in terms of this history,as part of this tradition.

The relationship between the local and the trans-local in the construction ofoppositional musical identities is an issue that should be addressed more com-pletely in ethnographic research; similarly, I think the relationship between musicconsumers and producers and how this relationship defines participants in scenesneeds to be problematised. For many participants in the Champaign music scene,differences between performers and audience members are non-existent orirrelevant. When a record store manager observed that everyone who worked inthe record store was a musician, except for one woman, he added, 'she might aswell be. She collects, she likes records and all that stuff'. The 'do-it-yourself' ethosof the alternative, college music environment clearly contributes to the perceptionthat performers and audience members are virtually interchangeable. The non-musician who owns Parasol records stated that 'this is an area where . . . somebodywho isn't perfect on the guitar or a perfect singer can get into i t . . . if I wanted to doit, I probably could pull it off'. When asked whether he considered himself more ofa musician or a fan, a local bass player responded:I think all musicians, all really truly good musicians, are big fans. And I think a lot of fansconsider themselves musicians; it seems like everyone [says] 'Oh, I'm gonna get a bandtogether', 'I'm gonna take guitar lessons'. I'm probably just slightly above that because I'veactually been on stage a couple hundred times.

Concluding thoughtsAn ethnographic, or micro-sociological, analysis of music scenes allows us to get asense of the plurality of practices that help constitute the identities of thoseinvolved. Examining actual lived experiences calls into question assertions thatclaim, for instance, that rock culture allows youths to enact ever-changing sexualand gendered identities in a space of radically conflicting social messages (see, forexample, Grossberg 1984, p. 108; and Redhead 1990, pp. 89-90). While socialidentities are not fixed once and for all, we must keep in mind that at any historical


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40 Holly Krusemoment within a particular cultural or subcultural context there are not an infinitenumber of options for experiencing identity. Alternative music identities are con-stituted in scenes which, as Sara Cohen observes of Liverpool, are:divided by cliques, factions, feuds and rivalries, yet at the same time united by age, gender,a common ideology, mythology, and gossip grapevine, and a web of interlinking networksand band genealogies as its members move between bands and music-related occupations.(1991b, p. 225)Such a field of relations does shift over time, but clearly is not an entirely fluidspace.

These particular subcultural formations are not defined only by musical tasteand knowledge; race, class and gender clearly are also important as points whichintersect with taste in music. The drummer for the Raleigh, North Carolina bandthe Connells is black; what is notable in discursive constructions of the band in themusic press is the degree to which his African-American-ness is effaced. Femalemusicians are more conspicuous than black musicians in college music; but as onewoman involved in the indie scene argues: 'women who love [indie guitar pop1rock] learn the art of transference . . . that everybody in indie rock is a boy' (Powers1992, p. 8). Nothing about the social and economic organisation of alternativemusic necessarily seeks to subvert the white, patriarchal structures of themainstream music establishment.

But what college, alternative, independent (these labels are largely used inter-changeably) music does do is enable subcultural participants who are largely mem-bers of the post-baby boom generation to draw a boundary between themselvesand the omnipresent baby boomers; to refuse definitions imposed on them and toreject the assumption that the twentysomethings, as a whole generation, mustgalvanise behind some 'cause' deemed acceptable by ex-members of the 'authentic'youth culture of the 1960s. If it is true, as the French situationist Raoul Vaneigemwrote, that 'the man [sic] of survival . . . is . . . the man [sic] of refusal' (1983, p. 9),then there is a lot at stake for all who choose, through their social and culturalpractices, in some small way to refuse the possible identities offered to them by ababy boom generation which is coming to control most of the material resources,and will therefore hold most of the power, in our society. If, as Angela McRobbiesuggests, '[ildentity could be seen as dragging cultural studies into the 1990sf, hen'[wlhat is now required is . . . a new paradigm for conceptualizing identity-in-culture' (1992, p. 730). I recommend we heed her call and work toward an under-standing of how - within a terrain of social, cultural and ideological practices -gender, race, ethnicity, class and generation are articulated and experienced.

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1991b. Rock Cultur e in Liverpool: Popular Mus ic in the Mak ing (Oxford)Finnegan, Ruth. 1989. The Hidden Musicians: M usic Making in an English Town (Cambridge)Fletcher, Tony. 1990. Remarks: The Sto ry of R. E. M . (New York)Frith, Simon. 1981. ' "The magic that can set you free": the ideology of folk and the myth of the rock

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Subcultural identity in alternative music culture 41Grossberg, Lawrence. 1984. ' "I'd rather feel bad than not feel anything at all": rock and roll, pleasure

and power', Enclitic, 8(1/2), pp. 94-111Hall, Stuart. 1989. 'Cultural identity and cinematic representation', Framework, 36, 68-81

1988. The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcher ism and the Crisis of the Left (London)Henriques, Julian, Holloway, Wendy, Urwin, Cathy, Venn, Couze and Walkerdine, Valerie. 1984.Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and Subjectivity (London)Laclau, Ernesto and Mouffe, Chantal. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic

Politics (London)McRobbie, Angela. 1992. 'Post-marxism and cultural studies: a post-script', in Cultural Studies, eds.

Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler (New York) pp. 719-30Mouffe, Chantal. 1988. 'Hegemony and new political subjects: toward a new concept of democracy', in

Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (trans. StanleyGray) (Urbana) pp. 89-104

Owen, Frank. 1991. 'Antihero', Spin, March, pp. 68-70Powers, Ann. 1992. 'A shot of testosterone', Voice Pazz O lop, 3 March, p. 8Redhead, Steve. 1990. The End-of-the-Century Party: Yo ut h and Pop Towards 2000 (Manchester)Reynolds, Simon. 1989. 'Against health and efficiency: independent music in the 1980s1, in Zoot Suits

and Second-Hand Dresses, ed. Angela McRobbie (Boston)Straw, Will. 1991. 'Systems of articulation, logics of change: communities and scenes in popular music',

Cultural Studies, 5(3), pp. 368-88Tomlinson, Alan (ed.) . 1990. Consumption, Identity, G. Style: Marketing, Meanings, and the Packaging of

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Subcultural Identity in Alternative Music Culture